My Tablet Won’t be Running any Silly Phone OS

We’ve been talking about an Apple tablet for years now, and of course, that chatter has boiled over into a frenzy that almost guarantees that Steve will walk on stage with something tablet-ish on the 27th, if for no other reason than the fear of a near-nuclear backlash.

While we’re confident that this will be the greatest innovation in tablets since Moses brought a couple down from Mt. Sinai, that’s all we know. The Apple-Reality-Distortion-Echo-Chamber has progressed from being all a twitter with conflicting expectations to achieving some kind of pig-headed consensus that frankly has got to be totally wrong. Principal among these group-think features is the absurd notion that the Moses Tablet v2.0 will run an OS from a freekin’ Phone.

Follow us after the jump where we taunt the conventional wisdom, until they go home crying to momma.

Forward

To kick it off, even writing this article is absurd to me. It strikes as being the Apple-geek equivalent of debating in the comic book store about who would win in fight between Batman and Superman while Krypton was in accent over Chiron.

So I want to be clear, we’re all just a bunch of metro-sexual psudo-analysts mentally masturbating over some alleged copulation of the Easter Bunny and Great Pumpkin.

If you’re here looking for, you know, actual information, you’d do better to skim, chuckle at the funny parts and wait until Wednesday, because neither I, nor anyone else, has any for you; only I’m honest enough to tell you that up front.

The Conventional Wisdom

The following breaks down basically what the Eco-Chamber agrees are the likely specs for the next “One More Thing…”. I’ve gone ahead and saved us both time by showing them side-by-side against my Nexus Onephone.

Moses Tablet

Nexus One PHONE

Processor

~1-2GHz ARM

1GHz ARM

Screen Resolution

540X960

480X800

Screen Size

~10 Inches

3.7 Inches

Camera

Maybe

Yes

Internet, movies, music, and junk

Yes

Yes

OS

iPhone 4.0

Android 2.1

Price

$800-1000, ~$300-$550 subsidized

$530, ~$150-$200 subsidized

At first glance those numbers seem perfectly reasonable, and it’s easy to see how “analysts” who can’t get real jobs could come up with them. You figure that Google sells the Nexus one at near cost, reverse engineer the prices, up the screen size a bit, back into the pricing that conventional wisdom says the thing will sell for, add the “Apple tax”, and Bob’s your uncle.

At second glance, reason flies out the window on the wings of the Tooth Fairy, because all these self-styled geniuses have done is design an iPhone for people with Astigmatism –that you can’t… um… talk on.

Of course, they argue, the Tablet will respond when you touch it. That too is a feature more cheaply purchased in Amsterdam’s red-light district.

The iPhone OS 4.0

Also as of this writing a mythical creature, and one I most certainly don’t want on my tablet. Again, easy to understand how one could think that, the Nook runs Android after-all (of course I sent my Nook back without opening it). The big issue I have with the notion of iPhone OS on any tablet is simple, Applications.

Oh sure, the iPhone store has like A million of them or whatever. But does it have Powerpoint? Pages? Word, Excel, Lightroom, Aperture, Entourage, Omnigraffle, anything you know, productive?

You see, to be something more than a device I keep in my bathroom to replace the magazines and books usually stacked there to the aggravation of my wife, I’m gonna need to be able to, you know, work on the tablet. In the words of 50 Cent: Just a Little Bit –It doesn’t need to be a full laptop or desktop replacement, my Nexus One sure isn’t, but it does need to be something more than a thousand dollar color book reader before I leave the house with it.

‘Cause you see, my bag is already, full and heavy. I got an iPod, Panasonic Lx3 Camera, 17” MacBook Pro, Nexus One, and Maui Jims, a bottle of water, and assorted snacks that help me maintain this burly pear shape that’s all the rage in Texas these days. Each of these are stashed away, with cables, chargers, cases for protection and such. I Just don’t have room. If anything, ideally, I’d like to leave the laptop at home sometimes for a run out to the Starbucks or a day-trip to Chicago.

So, a real version of OS X, that can run real OS X applications, is absolutely mandatory.

Unless…

Now I wouldn’t be a blogger if I didn’t hedge my bets some. If the thing is $250-$350 bucks, it could find a place in my bathroom and stay there. If it’s impossibly thin & light and still reasonably priced (as Kindle or Nook are) I might be able to convince myself to ditch the copy of Shutterbug for an electronic version, and it could find a place in my bag. But a thousand dollar device that’s got basically the same specs as my phone ‘cept for a bigger screen (even the resolutions are even similar), stays in the store.

About the author:

Leigh McMullen leads the Advisory Services & Strategy practices for the professional services arm of one of the Big-Five firms. He has written several books that would cure any insomnia you might have, and is an avid Mac junkie.

AriWeinstein

This is what I thought too. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite pan out that way. At the same time, it doesn’t cost $1,000, so…